For thousands of years pomegranates have stood as a symbol of rebirth – fertility and eternal life and according to a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine – the fruit may live up to its expectations and have the power to stop us from aging.

A team of Swiss scientists from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have just discovered a potential key to rejuvenation called urolithin A (UA).

But the fruit doesn’t produce the magical-seeming molecule on its own — instead the human gut transforms the pomegranate compound during digestion.